


Mirador

by Asimiento



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen, Holiday fic exchange :)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 07:30:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5618743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asimiento/pseuds/Asimiento
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the eight months and two weeks since the collapsing of the ante-verse breach: much of the world has busied itself, quickly shifting into a new post-war welfare state. The significantly downsized PPDC has detected approximately zero levels of breach activity. Doctors Geiszler and Gottlieb decide to maybe get out of Hong Kong, get out of this hell-hole, maybe see the world, maybe see the ocean, maybe observe the ocean firsthand, unsupervised, because what’s the worst that could happen?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirador

**Author's Note:**

  * For [perniciousLizard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/perniciousLizard/gifts).



> Inspiration is drawn from Mirador Villa, a former meteorological observatory turned Jesuit spiritual retreat center. It sits atop a chilly mountain province, some four hours north of Manila. Some locals believe that in order to reach heaven, you must climb your way to the skies.
> 
> Originally posted on tumblr, on December 25, 2015 for the Pacific Rim holiday swap. The prompt: “on the ocean.”

The year is 2025. It is exactly eight months, two weeks, and four days since the success of Operation Pitfall. 

Some twenty nautical mile stretch of steel scaffolding cuts across an archipelagic coastline, in an unfinished bisection like a massive skeleton jutting from the saltwater. Formerly the Coastal Wall, or the Anti-Kaiju Wall, or the Wall of Life, this one fraction in particular has been rechristened Mirador: a point of prospect. Its twin vistas: the unending sweep of the roiling Pacific, and the steadily recovering cities barred behind.

In some parts of the Pacific Rim, the walls have been torn down, pressed and soldered and thrown back into the ceaseless industrial circle of life. Here, the unfinished ruins remain as a memorial—a foreboding aquatic boneyard.

On the ocean, the setting sun’s dying light slants through steel lattice. Doctors Newton Geiszler and Hermann Gottlieb are making their way up a spiral stairway some few meters above the base, just above where Cirripedia-crusted steel unfurls in flakes as it meets the soft tumble of coastal waters, porous sheets of alloy staining the stark blue with muddy patches of brass.

* * *

In the eight months and two weeks since the collapsing of the ante-verse breach: much of the world has busied itself, quickly shifting into a new post-war welfare state. Meanwhile, the significantly downsized PPDC has detected approximately zero levels of breach activity.

Doctors Geiszler and Gottlieb decide, six months in, to maybe get out of Hong Kong, get out of this hell-hole, maybe see the world, maybe see the ocean, maybe observe the ocean firsthand, unsupervised, because what’s the worst that could happen? The probability of things going awry to disastrous degrees is, according to “the math,” a fraction significantly close to zero. Very unlikely. Maybe. _(It was more of Newt incessantly insisting, a long- suffering Hermann dragged in tow.)_

They make their way south of Hong Kong, to the Philippine north, in a quiet coastal village hours away from Manila. There, the wall has become somewhat of a tourist attraction.

“We climb up to grieve for ghosts. Or, to find silence away from the city,” explained a local from the nearby village, when Newt had asked about the wall. That the offending edifice has been appropriated into a destination with some eschatological appeal, that’s more than a little weird, Newt thinks, but there’s a tourist-friendly stairway and that’s what matters. He may or may not have thought this out loud.

Newt hurries along. Hermann asks if there is, perhaps, a lift to the top. The local explains, “the old custom is to hike up to the skies,” in a roundabout way of saying “no, we never bothered.” 

* * *

The wall is endless. The walk is excruciating. It takes approximately an hour and a half of steady circling up an uneven spiral stairway to reach the topmost point, to a line of thick metal sheets bordering the wall’s topmost contours.

There, a bolted-in plaque reads:

**THIS IS MIRADOR. EXTEND YOUR VIEW PAST THE POINT OF VANTAGE.**

They sit on the edge of the wall with their feet hanging in the air. Newt considers the gentle rise and fall of the tide, the steady waning of a muted yet palpable vestigial ache, the steel columns that taper upwards like cathedral spires. 

There is the rhythmic tapping of a lacquered cane like a faulty metronome. Above, the sound of aquatic avifauna swooping downwards. Below, the slow oxidization of remnants of war. There is a low interior cadence—a hum of epigenetic fear, an insidious gnawing at every crease in the cortex, an itch at every branch in the neural network. There is the electromagnetic echo, in absentia, of a gaping atomic fissure, tens of thousands of feet below the ocean’s surface.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Hermann says. “What are you thinking of?”

Newt is silent. Herman sighs. 

Newt gestures vaguely at the water. “That? Everything? Maybe I don’t know. I was kind of chasing after an unscientific hunch, coming here. Scratching an itch, more like. Well, unscientific hunch with some pseudoscientific merit, I mean, we both know there is a chance the breach could reopen. Maybe not there, but it could. Anyway, how about you? I mean, dude, why did you even follow me all the way out here?”

His arm narrows the scope of its swing to a Hermann-to-Newt trajectory. “What is this?”

Hermann looks over one shoulder. “You’re rambling, Newton.”

“Dude, you know what I mean.” 

Or, Hermann  _should know_. 

By this, Newt means: _this volatile, decade-long upward climb. Two years of overeager missives,to a catastrophe of an initial vis-à-vis, to six years begrudgingly spent in each other’s orbit, from coastal city to coastal city, from shatterdome to shatterdome, to the alleyway in Hong Kong, to the Drift, to the post- Drift state that has lightened much of what he recalls with the soft focus of reverie, and sharpened much of what they must surely now understand about each other, irritating idiosyncratic inclinations and all, through a terrifyingly acute, firsthand cognizance._

“As I recall, you dragged me along. I had absolutely no choice; you were quite persistent.” Hermann says.

Newt drops his hand and turns his gaze back to the water. “Sure I was.” 

A horn blows in the port some meters away. A small motorboat plies through the water, just below. A breeze hisses, smelling faintly of salt. Hermann shifts a few inches closer to Newt.

“It feels strange. This feels strange.” Newt says, quietly. Nothing's coming out of the ocean. Of that, he is certain.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Hermann pats a hand on Newt’s knee, abrupt and awkward, in a gesture probably meant to translate as reassurance. Newt tries not to laugh. It's the thought that counts.

They spend an hour silence.

They look past the specter of the wall, past the fading pull of the breach, past traces of blue-stained impressions of a collective alien consciousness, to a vast blue watery surface diffusing up into a vast blue open sky.


End file.
